The Release Date For 'Johnny English 3' Has Now Been Announced

Johnny English has always been a fun addition to Rowan Atkinson's career. With the Lion King star best known for portraying the eternal fool Mr. Bean and the sarky Blackadder, the bumbling MI-7 spy is still a popular name on Atkinson's CV.

WATCH THE ORIGINAL TRAILER FOR JOHNNY ENGLISH BELOW:

Credit: Working Title Pictures

That's why it's no surprise that Atkinson will reprise his role for a third outing in the series, the sensibly-titled Johnny English 3.

So here's some good news for anyone getting all excited at the thought of more Bond piss-takes, ripped-to-shreds spy movie cliches and straight-up stupidity - the film has now been given a release date of Thursday 20 September 2018.

Working Title Films/Universal Pictures

Johnny English 3 will be directed by David Kerr, whose directing credits include the first series of That Mitchell and Webb Look in 2006 and Channel 4 student comedy Fresh Meat. Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, who played Camille in Quantum of Solace, will also star, presumably playing the hero's love interest - come on, we've all seen Bond movies, we know the drill.

The series started in 2003, with the first film actually co-written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade - who have co-written every Bond film since 1999's The World Is Not Enough - and William Davies, who wrote How To Train Your Dragon and Twins.

With the inept spy English taking on John Malvovich's baddie Pascal Sauvage, the first film was a box office smash, grossing over $160 million (£118m) at the global box office.

Although Johnny English grossed over four times its budget, it took eight years for Atkinson to return for the sequel, Johnny English Reborn, which came out in 2011.

PA

Alongside Atkinson, that film starred Gillian Anderson from The X-Files as the head of MI7, The Wire's Dominic West as baddy Simon Ambrose and Daniel Kaluuya as English's sidekick Colin Tucker.

While it had a pretty decent cast and did just as well globally as the original, Johnny English Reborn flopped in the UK, grossing just $8 million (£5.9m) compared to the $28m (£21m) that the original raked in. You can see why producers may have been reluctant to revisit it, then.

Everyone loves a good trilogy, though, so bringing back Atkinson for one last hurrah as English makes sense, in a way.

Atkinson's latest role as George Simenon's Parisian police detective Jules Maigret (in the 2016 ITV series Maigret) is an unusually serious one for him, so Johnny English 3 is a good chance for him for bust out his famous funny faces again. You know the ones.

Not sure whether this means more scenes with English singing ABBA to himself in the bathroom mirror - was that your favourite bit?

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, rowan atkinson

Chris Ogden

Chris Ogden is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from the University of East Anglia with degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing before completing his NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. Chris has previously written for the independent culture magazine The Skinny, among other publications.

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